Post by gregster » 13 Jun 2018, 18:58
Flipeador wrote:In the end the most important thing is to have fun and have a good time, it's nice to know that someone has voted you positively.
That's part of what I mean. Personal fun for some that might ruin the whole thing for others. In the end, upvotes don't tell you much - upvotes are given for all kind of reasons, not necessarily quality. For example, to get upvotes back, to vote with a guru or even because you don't understand a complicated post, even for personal sympathy totally unrelated to the actual post.
Usually, after a while, you see that the regulars will shower each other with upvotes - even for negligible posts. Other people will feel obligated to give upvotes back to someone who regularly votes for them. Others will be sad, because they feel that they deliver bad quality, although the lack of votes might have other reasons. Of course, all these (and a number of other) behaviours will benefit certain people and will have social effects. But you won't even know why exactly you did get the votes... I am not even starting with the effects of envy.
All these effects will de-value the original purpose and will often lead to less individual and less detailed feedback (pushing a button is so much faster and easier). Real feedback can give so much more valuable information about the quality of a post than a +1 (like you wrote yourself, you wouldn't value each +1 the same; that shows the arbitrariness of the whole system). In the end, we might even lose information.
I do not try to ruin anything, but to improve and make the forum more user-friendly.
Nobody talked about you trying to do that. But even best intentions can go awry. Is this what we have today so awful?
[quote="Flipeador"]In the end the most important thing is to have fun and have a good time, it's nice to know that someone has voted you positively.[/quote]
That's part of what I mean. Personal fun for some that might ruin the whole thing for others. In the end, upvotes don't tell you much - upvotes are given for all kind of reasons, not necessarily quality. For example, to get upvotes back, to vote with a guru or even because you don't understand a complicated post, even for personal sympathy totally unrelated to the actual post.
Usually, after a while, you see that the regulars will shower each other with upvotes - even for negligible posts. Other people will feel obligated to give upvotes back to someone who regularly votes for them. Others will be sad, because they feel that they deliver bad quality, although the lack of votes might have other reasons. Of course, all these (and a number of other) behaviours will benefit certain people and will have social effects. But you won't even know why exactly you did get the votes... I am not even starting with the effects of envy.
All these effects will de-value the original purpose and will often lead to less individual and less detailed feedback (pushing a button is so much faster and easier). Real feedback can give so much more valuable information about the quality of a post than a +1 (like you wrote yourself, you wouldn't value each +1 the same; that shows the arbitrariness of the whole system). In the end, we might even lose information.
[quote]I do not try to ruin anything, but to improve and make the forum more user-friendly.[/quote]Nobody talked about you trying to do that. But even best intentions can go awry. Is this what we have today so awful?